Changes in India's foreign policy towards Pakistan

Changes in India's Foreign Policy Towards Pakistan

Changes in India's Foreign Policy Towards Pakistan

Dr. Nitin Prasad

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Copyright © 2017

ISBN : 9789386367792

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Contents

Preface

1.      Policy toward India and Pakistan

2.      India’s Changing Pakistan Policy

3.      Senators India’s ‘Aggressive Foreign Policy’

4.      Modi’s Foreign Policy: Tough on Pakistan and China

5.      India-Pakistan Relations at a Standstill

6.      Tasks before Indian Foreign Policy towards Pakistan

7.      Modi and India’s Relationship With Pakistan

8.      India and Pakistan : Conflict and Wars

Bibliography

Index

Preface

India’s most difficult foreign policy challenge has been Pakistan. At one level, the relationship has been managed reasonably well given the fundamental contradiction between India’s status quo-ist approach on Kashmir and Pakistan’s determination to alter the status quo. At another, Indian policy-makers’ inability to meet the challenge effectively reflects the constraints imposed by major policy choices.

For years, the centre of India's foreign policy was Pakistan. Love it or hate it. This was the country that the external affairs ministry had to break its head over most of the times. You can't brush off four wars (1947-48, 1965, 1971 and 1999), two conflicts (Rann of Kutch and Siachen), militancy in Kashmir that claimed tens of thousands of lives and terrorist attacks all over India.

Modi insists that India needs to stop comparing itself with Pakistan. It has been our biggest shortcoming and mistake that we have been tagging ourselves with another country and trying to do things. We are an independent country, we have our own policies and future, he explained. The so-called de-hyphenation may be a fair point, but the Modi government has drawn flak for its approach towards engaging with Pakistan. Most recently, just a week after the Indian prime minister paid a surprise visit to his Pakistani counterpart’s residence last December, terrorists attacked an Indian Air Force base in Punjab. All the matter is just compiled and edited in nature. Taken from the various sources which are in public domain.

Although the book has involved considerable empirical research, it is not simply fact-finding enterprise. It is also a prescriptive and analytical study intended to create and influence opinion regarding the essentials of policy-making process that would minimize the chances of non-rationality in Indian Foreign Policy.

—Editor

1

Policy toward India and Pakistan

Building on this modest reduction in regional tension, Secretary of State Colin Powell visited South Asia in July 2002 and described both governments as America’s ‘‘allies’’ in the war on terrorism, projecting an even-handed U.S. diplomatic approach. Yet other statements by Powell seemed to reflect a vague diplomatic tilt toward Pakistan. He accepted the Pakistani position that the infiltration of Muslim terrorists from Pakistan into Indian-controlled Kashmir had declined, despite the skepticism expressed by Indian officials. Moreover, by proposing to place the issue of Kashmir on ‘‘the international agenda,’’ Powell was siding with Pakistan, which wants Washington to play a more active role in future negotiations aimed at resolving that dispute. India has supported the idea of bilateral Indo-Pakistani talks about Kashmir but refuses to hold them until there is clear evidence that Islamabad has put an end to its sponsorship of terrorism in Kashmir.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that New Delhi regards the American view articulated by Powell as running contrary to India’s national interests as well as reflecting a distorted analysis of the current Indo-Pakistani tensions and the balance of power in South Asia. What the Bush administration has done through its attempt at mediation has been to help a weak Pakistan to strengthen its diplomatic hand in the confrontation with a more militarily powerful India. Musharraf, like Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis with the United States, recognized that the conventional and nuclear military balance of power favored the other side. And, like Khrushchev, he had no choice but to submit to the ultimatum imposed on him and bring an end to the terrorist infiltration into Indianheld Kashmir (in the same way that Khrushchev had to withdraw the nuclear missiles from Cuba).

The Bush administration’s diplomacy involved more than just helping Musharraf save face. It helped reduce the pressure on the Pakistani leader by hailing his public commitments to prevent terrorists from slipping into India. But Musharraf’s anti-terrorist measures proved to be temporary, enabling him to preserve U.S. support without actually ending the backing forMuslimmilitants in Kashmir. Pakistan continues to tolerate the presence of terrorist camps on its side of the line of control in Kashmir, allowing the anti-Indian militant groups to maintain their communication networks and logistical backup in Pakistan. And while the infiltration of terrorists did slow initially after Musharraf’s pledges were given to Washington, it has resumed at a level almost as high as before June 2002.

Equally important, the Indians resent what they consider the double standard that Washington applies in its war on terrorism in South Asia and the Middle East. India’s position on talks with Pakistan has not been very different from that of the Israeli government, which has refused to restart negotiations with the Palestinian Authority until the latter takes concrete steps to end terrorism. The Bush administration has regarded Israel as a partner in the war on terrorism, accused the PA of supporting anti-Israeli terrorism, and refrained from treating those two entities evenhandedly. Indeed, unlike in the case of India and Pakistan, Washington has not only expressed total support for Israel’s preconditions for talks with the PA but has also called for the removal from power of PA president Yasser Arafat. President Bush, who has refused to meet with Arafat, has also linked any U.S. support for the Palestinians to their adoption of an ambitious agenda of political and economic reform. But Musharraf, a dictator whose military coup brought an end to Pakistan’s democratic political system and whose main base of power is the political axis between Pakistan’s leading anti-democratic forces (the military and the religious establishments), was invited to the White House and was showered with military and economic assistance. Indian leaders have noticed that inconsistency.

Pakistan under Musharraf has had even more ties with terrorism and anti-American groups and policies than the PA has had under Arafat. In fact, when President Bush declared that the next phase of the anti-terrorism campaign would be aimed at pressing the members of the so-called axis of evil not to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and stressed that the war against terrorism would be grounded in a set of universal values, including the rule of law, religious freedom, and respect for women, he could legitimately have included Pakistan in that axis. After all, Pakistan’s leaders have maintained close ties to radical Muslim terrorist groups and have pursued successful efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD). And they have either supported or tolerated policies with clear anti-Western and pro-militant Islamic orientations that are the antithesis of the universal values that the Bush administration is supposedly promoting.

Instead of being placed on President Bush’s list of ‘‘evil’’ states, or at least being condemned and isolated diplomatically like Arafat’s PA, Musharraf’s Pakistan is now topping America’s ‘‘A List’’ of the antiterrorism coalition. Ironically, the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and the ensuing U.S.-led war on terrorism have given Musharraf an opportunity to improve the relationship betweenWashington and Islamabad. That relationship had experienced a steep decline in the 1990s, as the end of both the Cold War and the common struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan eroded the perception of shared strategic interests.

But since September 11, General Musharraf, whose regime had been the main source of diplomatic and military support for the terrorist Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, has portrayed his regime as an ally of Washington in its counterterrorism campaign. Despite his record—heading a military clique that assisted radical Islamic terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Kashmir, pressing for a war with India, advancing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, presiding over a corrupt and mismanaged economy— Musharraf is being hailed by the Bush administration as a ‘‘courageous’’ and ‘‘visionary’’ leader who is ready to reorient his country toward a pro-American position and adopt major political and economic reforms. In exchange for his belated support, Musharraf has been rewarded with U.S. diplomatic backing and substantial economic aid.

There is no doubt that Musharraf’s decision to join the U.S. war on terrorism did not reflect a structural transformation in Pakistan’s policy. It was a result of tactical considerations aimed at limiting the losses that Islamabad would suffer because of the collapse of the friendly Taliban regime in Kabul. Rejecting cooperation with Washington would have provoked American wrath and placed at risk Pakistan’s strategic and economic interests in South Asia.

But while some cooperation between the United States and Pakistan is necessary to wage the war against terrorism, it must not evolve into a new long-term strategic alliance. Washington should view Pakistan, with its dictatorship, failed economy, and insecure nuclear arsenal, as a reluctant supporter of U.S. goals at best and as a potential long-term problem at worst.

If anything, the Bush administration’s concern with nuclear proliferation and with the possible transfer of WMD to terrorist groups should make Pakistan—a nuclear military power whose military leaders and scientists are committed to the notion of an ‘‘Islamic Bomb’’ and have maintained ties to the international network of radical Islamic groups, including al-Qaeda—a focus of U.S. anti-proliferation and anti-terrorism policies.

Indeed, changing international realities and developments in Asia provide the Bush administration and Congress with an opportunity to consider ‘‘constructive disengagement’’ from Pakistan. That nation has little strategic value to Washington over the long term. Indeed, it is likely to become more of a burden than an asset as far as long-term U.S. interests and values are concerned. Hence, U.S. policymakers and lawmakers should reject the idea of establishing permanent military bases in the hostile political environment of Pakistan. They should also recognize that any effort to prop up the Pakistani military involves long-term risks, including the possibility that the powerful military machine of Pakistan will fall one day into the hands of a radical Islamic regime.

Conversely, Washington should recognize that Westernized and secular India is a more reliable and important partner than Pakistan in the war on terrorism. Moreover, India, some seven times more populous than Pakistan, should be the focus of U.S. strategic and economic interests in South Asia. Such a policy would reflect genuine American national interests at the end of the Cold War and in the aftermath of September 11. The United States has a clear interest in establishing strong ties with India, one of the rising political, economic, and military powers in Asia and a potential strategic counterbalance to an increasingly assertive and difficult China. India is also the world’s largest democracy as well as an important emerging economy and an expanding market for U.S. goods and investment.

The strengthening of U.S. ties with India should not, however, be construed as unconditional support for India’s position on Kashmir in a way that could increase the power of the more hawkish nationalist forces in New Delhi. Washington should remain committed to a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Kashmir dispute leading (it is to be hoped) to an outcome that will give that province more political autonomy.

But the United States should not get directly involved in trying to mediate that conflict and should recognize that American interests would be preserved if the resolution of the conflict reflected the balance of power in the region—which clearly favours India. On the other hand, a solution that tilts in the direction of the radical Muslim terrorists in Kashmir would amount to a defeat of the U.S. goals in the war on terrorism. Hence, pressing the Indians not to respond to terrorist acts directed from Pakistan and resisting calls by Indian leaders for the United States to condemn anti-Indian terrorism in Kashmir project more than morally dubious double standards. Such a policy runs contrary to U.S. national interests.

US Intelligence and Policy in India and Pakistan

India’s nuclear tests at Pokhran on May 11, 1998, stunned the world—including American intelligence and policy officials. Pakistan’s response, five nuclear weapons detonated in the Baluchistan desert, confirmed officially that the two military rivals were now also nuclear powers. In one of the most populous regions of the world, bitter adversaries in the midst of along-standing and hot war over Kashmir each achieved proven destructive power reaching well beyond their contiguous territories or the region as a whole....

How do we account for the sobering reality that nuclear tests conducted on the Indian subcontinent in mid-May 1998 were neither predicted nor prevented by U.S. policy-makers or intelligence officials? The specifics of the tests aside, the India-Pakistan case is instructive as an example of the failure of the instruments of U.S. statecraft to dissuade states from acquiring active nuclear forces. It also is a microcosm of the growing complexity of U.S. regional relations which will require far more nuanced and sophisticated forms of diplomatic and intelligence operations reaching well beyond engagement only of governments or heads of state.

Unlike the other cases examined in the course of the Study Group’s project (North Korea, Iran, and Libya), the United States was intricately involved in discussions with the governments of both India and Pakistan at the time of the nuclear tests and had for decades been seeking nuclear restraint from both parties, using a mixture of carrots and sticks. That such efforts failed to alter nuclear ambitions significantly, including reaching any agreement to postpone or certainly to abandon plans to conduct tests, speaks to possible misjudgments made by both the U.S. policy and intelligence communities about how the U.S. could best wield influence in the region. At the same time, the case puts into question whether the U.S. ever had the influence it thought it had to persuade states that had repeatedly expressed the conviction that nuclear capabilities were vital to their national interest and the willingness, at least rhetorically, to do so regardless of the costs.

Does this mean that the various U.S. attempts to halt nuclearization in the region were largely quixotic? A key difficulty of assessing the impact of U.S. nonproliferation policy on South Asia is that the objectives sought by policymakers changed repeatedly over time. To understand whether U.S. nonproliferation policies succeeded or failed in South Asia, it is important to recognize that these policies have not been fixed and constant over the years.

In his introductory remarks to the Study Group, a lead speaker described four stages of U.S. nonproliferation efforts in South Asia, and each of these stages had different goals and different policies. In the first stage (1970s-1980s), U.S. policy was focused on persuading countries not to seek nuclear weapons and on getting them to sign onto the NPT. In many ways, the United States succeeded during this stage, despite the fact that India and Pakistan never signed the treaty. After India’s initial test in 1974, it never publicly declared itself a nuclear weapons state: as an undeclared power, it achieved its desired security objective while preserving the global nuclear regime. Study Group participants noted that nonproliferation policies worked for 24 years thereafter—not a small achievement. These policies limited nuclear escalation on the Indian subcontinent, and they may have contributed to ensuring the credibility of the NPT. As one senior official put it, In 1974 there were key countries like Japan, many advanced countries, that had really not yet decided whether to have nuclear weapons or to join the NPT. I think that if at that time India and Pakistan had pursued active, overt nuclear weapons programs, it would have been very, very difficult to persuade a lot of these countries to join the NPT.

During the second stage (1990s–1998), according to this expert, we had realized that it was simply unrealistic to expect to roll back these capabilities. The policy goal of this period was to try to convince the Indians and Pakistanis to be satisfied with untested, undeclared nuclear capability. Einhorn added that in private discussions, U.S. officials had stopped pressing India to join the NPT. Clearly, for many of the reasons described above, however, U.S. policies failed to prevent India and Pakistan from testing nuclear weapons. In the face of a perceived existential threat, both India and Pakistan defied world opinion, forming, along with Israel and now North Korea, a special category of non-NPT-sanctioned nuclear weapons states. Given the conditions that compelled India and Pakistan to test, many have suggested that nuclearization was inevitable or at least unpreventable. Regardless of whether it could have been prevented in theory, it seems clear that, with the policy tools and bureaucratic conditions available to the United States at the time, an outcome of failure was understandable.

The third period of American policy began with the tests in May 1998 and lasted until 9/11. After the 1998 tests, the policy goal of the United States was to persuade India and Pakistan to accept limitations on their programs. While a concerted effort was launched under Strobe Talbott at the end of the Clinton administration to convince India to agree to limitations, the timing of these efforts was ill-fated. As one senior official in the Study Group noted, events—including the Kargil episode, the plane hijacking to Kandahar, the Musharraf coup, and the fall of the BJP government—made the prospect of nuclear limitations very unlikely.

In the final and most recent period (from 9/11 to the present), the U.S. agenda was refocused on preventing terrorists from acquiring access to nuclear weapons. This new focus allowed the United States to make a distinction between India, which had been a responsible caretaker of its nuclear capability, and Pakistan, which had been a major pro-liferator, not least as a result of the A.Q. Khan nuclear supply network, two of whose retired scientists reportedly met with Osama bin Laden. In addition, U.S. policy in South Asia emphasized avoiding regional conflict and on installing protections on nuclear facilities and materials. Aside from the 10-month conflict between India and Pakistan in late 2001 and early 2002, these two objectives have so far been successful.

Policy Tools and Options of Policymakers

What policy tools and options do policymakers have available and/or consider addressing the potential challenges posed by incipient nuclear programs? Which are selected or rejected? Why? The topic of policy tools was one of great interest among members of the Study Group. A common theme was that the U.S. ability to use incentives and disincentives flexibly to encourage changes in behaviour in South Asia... was heavily constrained by certain pieces of legislation. Sanctions legislation was given particular attention, and participants noted that neither carrots nor sticks had any significant effect.

In terms of sticks, the United States by the late 1990s had become, as one participant put it, obsessed with sanctions. Many participants were critical of so-called automatic sanctions—sanctions legislated by Congress that left the President with no option but to implement them. Not only did the sanctions—such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978, the Pressler Amendment of 1985, and the Glenn Amendment of 1994—fail to coerce India and Pakistan into behaving as the United States wished, but they may have actually been provocative.

Strobe Talbott suggests this in his book Engaging India: Not only were they [India and Pakistan] undeterred, they tested largely to demonstrate that they rejected American and international admonitions and that they were confident they could survive the consequences. As one participant summarized, Automatic sanctions work as a threat, not as an actual tool. If the targeted states see through the threat, then the sanctions will be meaningless.

Not only are automatic sanctions difficult for a President who is bound by their limitations, but they also can make the job of the intelligence community harder, another participant noted. The sanctions put the administration in the understandable position of trying to discredit the intelligence information. Another participant had a different perspective on the impact of automatic sanctions within the U.S. government: Congress resorts to automatic sanctions legislation out of frustration with an executive branch that has already lied to it so many times that they just get desperate.

As it happens, one of the most prominent set of sanctions passed—under the Pressler amendment—came about in a very idiosyncratic, as a senior congressional staff member explained. A more stringent bill had been proposed in 1984 by Senator Cranston—a bill that would have cut off aid to Pakistan immediately—and the Pressler bill was offered as an alternative that would buy time for the administration to address the Pakistanis on the nonproliferation issue. Instead, the executive branch failed to act decisively in mounting new diplomatic operations. By 1990, nuclear activity in Pakistan could no longer be easily glossed over, leading to the charade of annual State Department testimony to certify, against all available evidence, that Pakistan was not involved in proscribed nuclear activities.

Defenders of sanctions suggested that sanctions can slow down nuclear proliferation. Sanctions could be credited with the 24-year gap between India’s initial testing in 1974 and its full-fledged test at Pokhran in 1997, for example, a reflection of the higher costs and greater difficulties which sanctions impose on states seeking technical advancement. Critics of sanctions, remarked one participant, are frequently members of the executive branch who have been traumatized by what they see as their failures.

Carrots also proved less than effective. Residual distrust, left over from the Cold War, has lingered in the relationship between India and the United States, and it seemed for years that there was little that the United States could credibly offer India. In the case of Pakistan, legislative restrictions left the United States with very few carrots, aside from rather ill-conceived effort such as offering the Pakistanis the F-16s that they had already purchased in 1990 that had not yet been delivered.

A former official, discussing the negotiations on preventing the Pakistani test, recalled that when presented with this unappealing offer, Pakistani General Wahid snarled, We choke on your carrots. In short, neither the carrots nor the sticks offered by the United States to elicit nuclear restraint proved particularly attractive, leaving Indian and Pakistani determination to develop nuclear forces largely intact.

For reasons of geopolitics and national pride, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and associated such agreements represented a form of post-colonial discrimination that did not sit well with the polities of either state. As one participant noted, discussions of the PPT or the CTB were unproductive: The Indians felt immediately [like] second-class citizens. Why, India asked, should the door be slammed shut on their right to possess nuclear weapons based on the arbitrary cut-off date of 1967? Why should India be in the doghouse and China a respected player at the table? was a typical lament. As Jaswant Singh put it only slightly differently in a Foreign Affairs article published in September/October 1997, If the permanent five’s possession of nuclear weapons increases security, why would India’s possession of nuclear weapons be dangerous? If deterrence works in the west as it so obviously appears to since western nations insist on continuing to possess nuclear weapons, by what reasoning will it not work in India? As a result of these basic incompatibilities, according to one expert, diplomatic exchanges with Delhi more often than not meant that We (the U.S) were (always) lecturing; while the Indians were moralizing.

As a former senior official noted in the Study Group, I’m of the view that the reason that we were not more successful over the years in actually finding a way to deal with India was because we never answered any of those questions. Neither the United States nor India went out of its way to allay fears harboured by the other. The Indians have long expressed the view that issues inherent to their national interest were being dictated to them by an upstart and perhaps even a lesser power. This response, in turn, left Americans with the notion that India was trampling on global regimes that are supported by a wide majority of nations without concern for the potential damage this could do to international stability.

Problematic Relationship between the Intelligence and Policymaking

A problematic relationship between the intelligence and policymaking communities involved in South Asia was frequently addressed over the course of the meeting. There was broad consensus that while Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s frequent gathering of experts was a good example of how the policy and intelligence communities could be brought together, this mechanism was temporary and ad hoc. An important question, raised several times, was whether policymakers have ever been sufficiently attuned to strategic intelligence (the big picture) in South Asia. One former intelligence official suggested that because U.S. policymakers have resisted looking at alternative outcomes... [and] are not doing a mid-course reality check, the risk of continuing to misjudge the evolving motives and behaviour of the two states will continue to be high.

Substantial frustration was expressed that the policy community was never ... asking the right questions... [and] not going beyond the sort of quotidian next step of its bureaucratic plan to do something that really embraces a long term vision of security. In addition, as another participant noted, the psychology of decision-making plays out when policymakers are confronted with information that directly contradicts their ideas or policies: The literature says that very, very frequently, they set aside information that increases their level of discomfort with their own decision, and then they... cherry-pick... what they really want to hear.

A participant highlighted the frustration shared by many intelligence analysts that they seldom have a chance to hear what the policymakers actually do with the intelligence that is produced. During the Kargil Crisis, however, it was noted that intelligence officials were invited to meetings at the State Department, thereby allowing them to get immediate feedback about how the intelligence was received by the policymakers. On the other side, frustration was expressed by a congressional committee staff member that much intelligence was so sensitive that it might not have gotten to the policymakers who really had to read it. Without exposure to this intelligence—not just the general conclusions but also the facts to back them up—it is difficult for policymakers or members of Congress to cultivate a larger strategic vision.

The Study Group cited the increasingly powerful Indian-American community as a substantial domestic (U.S.) factor affecting policy toward South Asia. One participant remarked that Next to the Israelis now. Indian Americans are the most important ethnic lobby in the United States. In addition, Indians per capita are the wealthiest minority group we have in this country. As a domestic political factor, the influence of the Indian-American community may be partially credited with President Clinton’s swift turnaround on India after the tests: his visit to India in March 2000 (not even two years after the tests) signalled the beginning of a strong push by the United States—continuing to this day—to improve relations with an India that is rapidly gaining economic and geopolitical clout on the world stage.

The Changing Institutional Balance

When Subrahmanyam started writing for newspapers as the director of IDSA in the 1960s, there was barely concealed condescension from the traditional international relations community. The prevailing view was that ‘serious scholars don’t write in newspapers’. While the Indian academic attitudes towards media might not have changed significantly over the last four decades, the power of the public forum has dramatically increased in the intervening period. As the Indian democracy matured, the media began to acquire greater visibility if not influence on policy making. The area of foreign and national security policies was no longer immune to the impact of the media.

One of the unintended consequences of Indira Gandhi’s short-lived Emergency Rule during 1975-77 was a palpable increase in the power of the print media and its new self-assurance. That the rulers of Delhi could be overthrown in elections helped generate a more equal two-way relationship between the print media and the government.

If the 1980s saw the steady accretion of the print media’s power in the country, there has been a dramatic surge in the power of the private electronic media since the late 1990s. This in turn has had a significant impact on the national security and foreign policy discourse within India. That the Indian media could be treated as a hand maiden of the foreign office bureaucracy was a commonly held view within the South Block.

This perception might have been valid when a small but docile group of foreign office ‘beat’ correspondents would deferentially take dictation from mid-level bureaucrats in the foreign office. Those days, however, are long gone, as a number of factors have altered the equations between media and the officialdom. The class background, educational qualifications, and the pay of the media personnel has dramatically evolved during the 1990s, and they no longer have a reason to acknowledge the presumed superiority of the officer class, nor are the new generation of journalists dependent on a variety of favours dispensed by the state machinery. The media’s access to political leaders within and outside the government has become closer over the years and many journalists themselves have effortlessly moved into political parties and the parliament. The tabloidisation of the media meant it is constantly on the lookout for juicy human interest stories about the foreign office and the rest of the bureaucratic system; it could make or break personal reputations of senior officers. From being a one-sided relationship, the media-foreign office relationship is a two-way street of mutual give and take. Even more significant was the weakening of New Delhi’s power structures after 1989. The replacement of one party or one family rule by weak coalition governments meant the political classes were less domineering and more eager to please the media. Just as a host of other institutions, including the judiciary and the election commission to name a few, asserted themselves in the last two decades, the fragmentation of political power in the centre strengthened the media’s clout. If the politicians needed good press, the bureaucrats were quick to adapt in the 1990s as they sought to leverage the press for their own individual advance or in winning policy battles within the government. The media scene in Delhi began to resemble that in Washington, where different sections of bureaucracy routinely leak information on a selective basis to shape public opinion.

Weak governments and strong media meant the press and television could whip up popular passion and utterly complicate the functioning of the government in such crisis situations as the hijacking of the Indian airliner IC814 at the